VAYISHLACH | The Healing of Shechem

וְאֶֽעֱשֶׂה־שָּׁם מִזְבֵּחַ לָאֵל הָֽעֹנֶה אֹתִי בְּיוֹם צָֽרָתִי וַֽיְהִי עִמָּדִי בַּדֶּרֶךְ אֲשֶׁר הָלָֽכְתִּי

“… I will build an altar there to the God who responds to me in my time of distress, who has been with me on the road that I have traveled.”

Genesis 35:3

 

In my encounter with Torah, one of my practices, inspired by the poet Rilke, is to live the questions. One question I live with, as an object of meditation, is, “Why are the spiritual and ethical teachings I seek so buried beneath violence and hatred in the Torah?”

In this week’s Torah portion, for example, Simeon and Levi, two sons of Hebrew patriarch Jacob, kill every male in the city of Shechem (near Nablus, in the heart of today’s West Bank). Jacob’s sons, possibly the same ones, possibly others, plunder all the livestock, and rape and kidnap the women and their children.

Jacob condemns the act, but only because it endangers him and his tribe’s survival.

And God protects Jacob in exchange for fidelity.

I appreciate Hasidic interpretations that bring this to an inner level. Perhaps one way of finding wisdom and spiritual guidance is to read this as a truth-telling of how hard it is for our human species to live from a place of gratitude. Jacob teaches this to his household by instructing all of them to get rid of their foreign idols, and to prepare for a ritual that honors “the God who responds to me in my time of distress, who has been with me on the road that I have traveled.”

And still, I can’t help thinking: How does this episode affect other peoples who share the love and history with the land that Jews have?  How can I read this in a way that inspires a peaceful transition to sharing the land and resources of all its inhabitants?

To address this question, I pause and sit, breathing in and out, with the discomfort I feel in my body, reading this story. I allow whatever arises. Rabbi Shefa Gold calls this, “making your body your ally.” Let the body speak its pain, its confusion. Lean into it.

Using Nonviolent Communication, I gently put my attention on the feelings and needs my breathing and my body are speaking. What wants to emerge from my discomfort, my longing to encounter Torah in a way that aligns with my values and longing for the world?

I notice curiosity arising. What is this place Shechem? What has happened here that collects such pain and suffering?

Shechem means shoulder in Hebrew. And I breathe in and out, imagining the shoulder in the kabbalistic depiction of the name of God, YHVH. The letter hei is the shoulder. Today my shoulders have carried woes about covid, my children’s safety and choices during covid, the government’s complete failure of leadership in communities. I shoulder so much today, we all do.

I breathe into the tension in the shoulders, letting go, letting them drop down. I feel the sadness, under the tension, for all the suffering in the world.

Hei, the letter which, in meditation, is the exhale.

 

We can bring the Tibetan Buddhist tonglen practice into our meditation on hei, on Shechem.

Breathing in, I make myself a channel for the healing of Shechem. The Shechems within and without. I visualize Shechem as the place where toxins of hatred, violence, misogyny and racist hatred, have accumulated. God is there, perhaps weeping. God sees the violence against women, plundering, failed attempts to reconcile. Perhaps God hopes Jacob and Dinah can bring the energy of love there.

We know, inside ourselves and looking at the world, this violence and desperation that arises in humans, causing suffering and destruction.

With this practice, we breathe it in, making of ourselves a channel for transformation. And we breathe it out, letting go of the trauma and fear that have accumulated on our shoulders, triggering thoughts and actions that continue the violence and suffering.

Shechem has collected all of the negative, smoky, toxic energy of human greed and violence. It is suffering. And it is the place where we can exhale and breathe out the suffering. We make space for the next inhale, purified, so that a new consciousness of new possibilities can arise.

 

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

— By Rainer Maria Rilke

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29